UK, US and Australia Sign Supply Chain Resilience Pact

The COVID-19 pandemic, not to mention a string of other major disruptions seen in recent years, have exposed the sheer fragility of global supply chains. 

Organisations around the world face a tough task to ensure risk management strategies are up to scratch and crucial operations can withstand interruptions – whether anticipated or unforeseen. 

There is widespread acceptance of the need to future-proof integral supply chains, as demonstrated by a trilateral collaboration between the US, UK and Australia, whose governments have agreed a supply chain resilience pact aimed at addressing risks and strengthening strategic cooperation between the superpowers.

A newly-signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) includes the establishment of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States Supply Chain Resilience Cooperation Group to cooperate on data sharing and joint action to build resilience in priority supply chains, enhancing the nations’ mutual ability to identify and address risks, threats and disruption to critical supply chains.

Historic relationship deepens

In a statement, the UK’s Department for Business and Trade (DBT) said the cooperation group would begin work by developing an early-warning pilot focused on the telecommunications supply chain – essential to global, digitised economies.

By identifying and monitoring disruption risks to the telecommunications supply chain, it’s hoped the pilot will enhance all three countries’ knowledge of the vulnerabilities, criticality and residual risks. 

Ultimately, it will result in the development of procedures for sharing this information and responding cooperatively to disruptions.

“Strengthening critical supply chains is vital for ensuring the stability and resilience needed to meet the UK’s growth mission,” the DBT added.

“This agreement signifies a deepening of the important and historic relationship between the UK, US and Australia and reinforces our mutual commitment to tackling supply chain challenges.”

Supply chains ‘more fragile than ever’

The formation of a supply chain resilience pact comes after Ivalua discovered almost half (47%) of UK businesses have experienced an increase in supply chain disruption in the last 12 months.

The spend management leader found UK businesses have, in the last year alone, been disrupted by high inflation (79%), high energy or fuel costs (75%), the war in Ukraine (53%) and ongoing conflict in the Red Sea (44%).

The survey of 300 supply chain and procurement decision-makers revealed that, over the coming 12 months, 45% expect supply chain disruption to increase. Three in five agree that, after years of disruption, their supply chains feel more fragile than ever.

“Supply chain disruption continues to have a significant impact on business operations due to repeated, unpredictable ‘Black Swan’ events,” comments Ian Thompson, VP Northern Europe at Ivalua. 

“These major disruptions used to be rare, but now feel like a fact of life. This means global supply chains have become more fragile than ever, causing delays, shortages and increased costs as factories shut down and transportation networks fall victim to delays. 

“Consequently, UK businesses feel like they’re stuck in a loop of constant disruption, unable to fully recover after each event.”

However, businesses said the following strategies had been effective in mitigating the impact of supply chain disruption: 

• Improving geographical diversity of the supplier base (64%)
• Finding alternative suppliers for critical goods and services (64%)
• Increasing nearshoring (63%)
• Increasing onshoring (61%)

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